“Nationally, eight percent of high-school seniors say they have used some type of so-called synthetic marijuana in the last year,” said Suthers. “Paymon marketed these spice products as safe and legal when in fact they are very dangerous as well as illegal,” Suthers warned.

A joint undercover investigation carried out by the Aurora Police Department and the Colorado Department of Revenue in July 2013 resulted in the removal of 1,181 packages of spice from Paymon’s. Paymon’s sold a variety of different spice products including “Crazy Monkey,” “Mad Monkey,” “Sexy Monkey,” and “iBlown,” as well as unlabeled packages of spice products.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation analyzed five samples of the spice products sold by Paymon’s. All five spice products contained illegal synthetic cannabinoids. Two of the products contained AB-PINACA, a chemical analog of APINACA and a suspected cause of the synthetic cannabinoid outbreak. The APINACA analogs are the latest types of synthetic cannabinoids being used in spice products and forensic lab agents have only recently been able to identify them.